The Beauty Queen of Manhattan
by Scribere Est Agere
Summary: Only Bobby would lie half naked in her bed and call her by her last name. Sequel to Near Death & After Life.


**Title: **The Beauty Queen of Manhattan  
**Author:** Scribere Est Agere  
**Pairing: **Goren/Eames  
**Spoilers:** Sometime after Untethered.  
**Rating:** M  
**Disclaimer: **These characters do not belong to me.

**Summary:** Only Bobby would lie half-naked in her bed and call her by her last name.

Sequel to _Near Death & After Life_

/

**A/N:** OOC says you? Pft, says I. I write what I want to see happen on the show and that, _that_ is the true Beauty Queen of fan fiction.

/

Everything has beauty, but not everyone sees it.

_Confucius_

/

They return to her apartment late Christmas Day, but not late enough that he can't go home, if he wants.

He doesn't want, he realizes.

She hands him a mug of tea, sits next to him on the couch, feet tucked neatly under her.

"Your family…" He smiles.

Alex laughs. "Can be a bit much, I know."

"No, no…they were nice. It was nice. Really."

Alex views him from over the rim of her own mug, smiles crookedly. "Nice."

He leans back, tries to get comfortable. His shoulder throbs and he's suddenly very tired. He stares into his mug, tries to get his bearings. He's not used to not knowing what to say to her. He's not used to sitting in her living room drinking tea and thinking about the feel of her back under his fingers.

"Thank you…for today. For inviting me. It was—"

"I'm glad you came."

They look at each other, then away. Then there's no where else to look anymore.

/

Then they are in her bedroom again, in her bed, on their backs, shoulders barely touching.

Barely.

She rests her hands on her stomach, listens to the breaths that fill the room.

/

She shifts beside him and he smells her perfume and remembers something. A year ago, maybe. No. Not quite, but close. They were in a pawn shop questioning Clarence. Clarence the owner, like Clarence the angel in _It's a Wonderful Life_. But, not an angel after all.

"Seen this girl?" Bobby had held up a photo of Adele, 20-something, blonde, attractive by most standards, he'd supposed.

Clarence had given a low whistle, shaken his head, nodded approvingly. "Nope."

"You sure? Think hard now."

"Oh boy. Nope. I'd remember her."

"Yeah?"

"Oh yeah. Good lookin' lady like that?"

"Right," Bobby had sighed, slid the photo away. Clarence had stopped him with a finger.

"The ugly ones I don't remember so much, the desperate ones with the sob stories. But the pretty ones?"

Bobby had glanced at Eames who had wandered slightly away, letting Bobby work this one. He saw the corner of her mouth twitch.

"The ugly ones. Right." Bobby pulled the photo out from under Clarence's grimy fingers, slid it back into his coat pocket.

"I mean, it's all relative, right?" Clarence had said, leaning towards Bobby conspiratorially. Bobby glanced over at Eames, who was doing her best to look interested in the shelves of dusty jewelry and knickknacks that had once upon a time belonged to other people.

"How's that?" Bobby leaned closer, tilted his head, smiled.

"Well, beauty, right? I mean. Take her for instance," Clarence jutted his unshaven chin in Eames' direction and Bobby tensed, as did the back of Alex's neck.

"Yeah?"

"Well, she ain't no beauty queen, that's for sure, but." Clarence shrugged magnanimously and Bobby resisted every urge in his body telling him to leap across the glass case and put his hands very, very tightly around Clarence's neck. "Hey, to each his own, right?"

Bobby had laid his hands flat on the glass countertop, taken a few deep breaths and cut his eyes at Eames, who had turned ever so slightly towards the men. She was smirking, almost laughing, maybe. Bobby licked his lips.

"Exactly, Clarence," he'd said quietly. "To each his own, indeed."

Outside the store Eames pulled on her gloves, let the icy wind blow her hair back from her face.

"Well, he was helpful," she said, looking around for a coffee shop. "The next time we need to find an ugly girl, Clarence is first on our list."

Bobby had shuffled his feet, looked down at her. He'd wanted to say something, something _right_. He'd wanted to hug her or something. Instead he'd reached over, wrapped his bare hand around her wrist, felt the soft skin and the pulse there, below the cuff of her coat. She'd looked up at him that day, startled.

"What?"

"What he said…Clarence…he said—"

"Bobby," she'd laughed out loud. Out loud. "Good grief. It's not like it's the first time I've heard something like that." She pulled her hand away and shoved it in her pocket. "Been hearing it all my life. Look. Java Jim's. Let's go."

And that had been that.

/

He remembers that day as he lies next to Eames in her dark bedroom, late Christmas Day, wounds and all. He speaks carefully to the ceiling and wonders if she might smack him.

"I want…I _need_ …to look at you," he says it so very quietly, but she hears the urgency, can feel it reverberate somewhere in her chest.

"You look at me every day," she jokes but she doesn't smile and neither does he.

"I see you…every day. I need to… _look_ at you."

It's very dark but she can still see his face, can see his eyes and how dark they are. She thinks of the hallway, the hospital. She thinks of red blinking lights and frozen water and fruitcake with marzipan icing. She thinks about near death and now, after life. Endings and maybe, beginnings. She nods, struggles to sit up. He does, too. She tugs on the edge of her T-shirt, tries to pull it up over her head. She can't. She looks at him and he looks at her and she nods. He reaches out then and helps, lifting it up slowly and she can feel the hem of the material (light blue, printed with yellow flowers) skim over her ribcage, over her bare breasts, up one arm and over her head, down the other arm. She feels like she's 17 again, sitting in the backseat of a cooling car in the middle of nowhere and she realizes _how good_ it feels to feel that way again. He holds the shirt in his hand and she sits like that, still, concentrates on the cool air on her skin. She closes her eyes and she's not sure why. Yes, she is. She doesn't want to see him looking at her just yet.

He's been holding his breath — he must have been — because she hears him exhale suddenly, shakily, and feels a rush of warmer air fan across her chest and she can't help shivering a little.

She opens her eyes.

He's not looking at her body, as she thought he would be; he's looking at her and no one has ever looked at her like that in her life.

She closes her eyes again because she wants to remember. She wants to never, ever forget.

/

When she opens her eyes again she reaches out with slightly shaking hands and unbuttons his shirt. She doesn't look at him but she can feel his eyes on her, always always on her. She slides his shirt off, sees the stark white bandage on his shoulder that she knew was there and still. It startles her. Square, antiseptic. She remembers all the blood and her little hands. She sighs and the sound disappears in the room. She looks at him finally and he nods.

They lie down, face each other. He winces.

"Your shoulder," she says. He nods, tries to turn to his back. "Wait. We'll switch sides."

"S'okay," he shakes his head _no no_ but she feels no pain in her wrist at all now and suddenly feels the need to move; she is humming with some kind of crazy energy.

"Eames—" he says as she sits up and she grins. Only Bobby — _only_ Bobby — would lie half-naked in her bed and call her by her last name.

So she does the only thing she can think of; she climbs across him, awkwardly. She's halfway over, straddling his waist, when he stops her with a hand on her hip and he's looking at her _like that_ again.

"You're so beautiful," he says. She starts to say something sarcastic, something flip and biting (You need to get out more, Bobby) but she knows he's serious and he means it and for a split second she lets herself believe it, too. She bites her lip hard and wonders how he's managed to make her cry two times in as many days.

She slides back a little and lies down on him, feels her breasts push against his warm warm chest and feels him jerk a bit because he wasn't expecting that and his hand clamps down on her hip and he sighs into her hair. She turns her head and listens for his heart beating; she _needs_ to feel it against her skin and when she does she smiles. Okay. Okay, good.

She presses her lips hard into the space between his ear and shoulder, presses her lips softly to the bandage (he should change it, she thinks and will remember to tell him so later), clings to him for a moment to reassure herself that he's _here_, he's really here and he's lying beneath her, then she slides down the other side of him and as she does she turns her head and he does, too, and his lips catch hers and he's kissing her.

And like everything else he does, he does it extraordinarily well.

/

He's whispering something as he kisses her and he's kissing her cheekbones, her jawline, the tip of her nose. He kisses her forehead, her hair, her eyes and back down to her lips and he's whispering something the entire time and it takes a moment to slow her heartbeat down enough to _hear_ him:

_My_

_Alex._

/

She could devour him. Instead, she pulls back, breathing raggedly. She looks down at her toes, his legs. He is shaking.

"What are we—" she begins.

"I don't know. But we need to stop _right now_ if we are going to stop—"

/

He could devour her. Instead he lets her pull back and he gulps for air, looks down at her toes that are digging into his shins. And that's what does him in, what sends him plummeting.

Her toes on his shins.

His hands find her shoulders, her breasts, her _breasts_ and his mouth is on her face again and he feels her hands in his hair on his neck and she's kissing him back hard, harder.

And they can't stop.

/

Alex Eames has had sex with precisely two men since Joe's death. One — what was his name, Ed? Ted? — was a very unfortunate one-night stand and best forgotten. The other, Terry, was steadier, longer, but not very long really, in the Big Scheme of Things. Months, and not much more. Work, work, life, Bobby, everything.

Bobby.

/

Bobby Goren has slept with precisely three women in the past six years and although he could tell you hundreds of precise details about each of them (hair/eye colour, weight, favourite hobbies, most annoying habits), he won't because none of it matters.

Eames is the one he thought about each time.

/

They are both very careful and very quiet. They don't want to hurt each other, in any way.

He feels himself reaching the precipice and he doesn't want to fall just yet because he doesn't want this to be over. He forces himself to slow down, to slow down and look at her and the way her head is turned to the side, her hair across her face, the sound of her beneath him and he's never seen anything so beautiful, ever.

/

When she comes she doesn't make a sound because she doesn't know what kind of sound to make with Bobby. Instead she buries her head in his neck and hangs on hangs on hangs _on_.

/

"How can we work together now?" she says, later.

"How can we not work together now?" he says, and she looks at him and laughs a little because as usual, he's right.

We make quite a pair.

We do.

_We do._

/

_Fin_


End file.
